


Cold Tide

by Anonymous



Category: Captain America (Movies), Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Gen, Mental Coercion, Murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-13
Updated: 2014-04-13
Packaged: 2018-01-19 03:57:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1454530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The brand on your new arm looks like something you've seen on television.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cold Tide

The nerves in your arm are fine, your brain just doesn't know what to do with them. The arm is removed. The phantom pain is constant. Chau takes off his glasses and touches the scars on your side. You don't know if you should hold your breath or not. You don't know where those scars came from. Chau says something in Korean and you repeat the phrase back in English. Japanese, next.

When you are able to report successes in your missions, you are allowed to be awake---a few hours, maybe a day or two beyond the allotted time. Report failures, and you are put back into the capsule. Lie, and Chau makes you listen to a poem about the ocean---in Chinese---that makes you feel like someone has touched your spine with an electric needle. You are not able to repeat the combination of words, on your own, but you know that Chau knows every syllable that can make you hurt like that.

A fishing boat trawls in a catch of dead sea robin, and the undissolved marrow they'd been trying to eat. You could lie to Chau. There is a smaller boat, hooked to the vessel's side, and an oar. There is plenty of rope. Tie the crew wrist to wrist, give them sealed, plastic gallons of fresh water. Give them an hour to row back to where other boats might find them.

You kill everyone on board.

* * * *

You don't know how many kaiju attacks there have been, but you get the sense that they have been less frequent. Chau does not make it a priority to tell you exactly how long you have been under. You overhear him tell someone else---over the phone---that you came from the sea.

"Would you like to meet him?"

The pain in your arm changes. The voice on the other end of the line is quiet.

"That's what I thought."

* * * *

In the time you've been with him, Chau has discovered two shipwrecks, the first from Wold War 2, the second as old some island's being named. Chau ignores them. No part of them could be worth even a fraction of the biomass you're hunting.

* * * *

The air sacs look like blue parachutes. The current places them at the port a little after sunrise. The wall project is only a few girders at this latitude, and not all sea traffic radios in to the harbor master. You steal a car and hold down the horn for two full minutes----counting----before you accelerate the next six feet off the dock and into the water. Strap on your mask. The guard boats only have their searchlights at this hour, and you wait 'til their engines are off before you push out from the sunroof and swim up in the dark.

* * * *

Each time, before the capsule, you are put through a round of dialysis. You are put through a round of platelet supplementation. You are given pills to slow the function of your kidneys. There is something called relay fluid, in your body, that makes it possible for Chau to teach you things. You eat and drink only what Chau measures out for you. You know only what Chau teaches you.

* * * *

The brand on your new arm looks like something you've seen on television.

* * * *

"How in any _possible_ universe did some moonshine gang get a helicopter?"

"They don't have it anymore."

"And we don't have those _god damn ventricles_ because you decided to crash the thing."

You don't try to describe what happened, or what the pilot had tried to do when he'd spotted you climbing their tether line. Chau looks like he wants to break your neck, but he doesn't touch you. Instead, he breathes out, once, and hands you a folder.

"I need you for something. We have a timeline of just hours on this, and I'm going to need you to do... better if you don't want to be in that pod for the next century."

You look through the photographs. These aren't satellite images; these are toner copes of what looks like material for a press release. In the pictures, there is an aircraft carrier, and a metal hand holding a skull. It takes you a second to figure out the scale.

The hand of a Jaeger---Mark 3, at least---holding the largest intact kaiju skull piece you've ever seen. Category..... four?

Chau is saying something else. There's a laminated clip card with your face on it in the folder too---a security badge. You'll have to remember this new name.

How can you tell---just from looking at its knuckles---that the Jaeger is at least a Mark 3 model?

The logo in the corner of each photo is---

* * * *

"Who the hell is Yancy?" 


End file.
